We are, with all of our very shiny tools, still primates. We still crave physical experience–and more than that, a physical experience of story, of narrative, that thing which has grown up from a thing done around the fire in exchange for meat and wine to a thing done on a vast stage, with paper and ink and pixels and files, a thing done around a table at a conference in a city of high towers. We still want to use our hands and our bodies to do things. We still want to wander and pick up and hold and flip through and wedge a thumb in. Libraries are a great bastion of physical experience–a literal city of books, with laws and codes and maps and roads through high paginated towers. This is also a magical thing. Any city is. Any forest in which you might get lost and meet a fairy or a monster or a companion.
June 10, 2012 at 7:40 am |
Brilliant!